A Projectionist's Nightmare.

I got this picture off a projectionist's forum. This isn't at Western Film, it's a print of Angels and Demons somewhere in Australia. That's the film all over the floor, where it's not supposed to be.

The piece of equipment in the middle is called a platter. It consists of three revolving discs about 4 ft wide. On the bottom one you'll see a film as it's supposed to look, nicely wound in a big spool with the beginning of the film in the center and the end on the outside.

When a film plays off a platter it pays out from the center, goes over some rollers, through the projector and back onto one of the other discs. It wraps around a ring placed in the center and ends up looking the same as it started, just on a different disc.

What happened here is somehow the film was not going back onto the platter but was just spilling onto the floor. There's several things that can cause this, mostly projectionist error but sometimes it can be a equipment problem. Even something like a momentary power drop out can cause this. That's why you'll always see the projectionist at Western Film go into the booth after the power blinks, even if the film seems to be running normally.

The scary thing is the average film is 12,000 ft long, that's a lot of film to try to wrap back up manually.

A night of unusual occurences.

Tonight was one of 'those' nights where things seem to happen weirdly. I was projectionist tonight. I ran the first show (Boy in Striped Pajamas ) with no problems. I threaded up for the late show (The Spirit) and was about to go back out to the lobby when I realized I should check what time the late show hit credits so I'd be back in the booth to turn up the lights. Comparing what times the two movies hit credits I realized Spirit was longer than Boy. I happened to look at the films sitting on the platter on my way back out of the booth and realized something looked odd. As the films are in a circular pattern on the platter the longer films form bigger circles. The smaller film was threaded up. It turned out I had threaded up Boy again rather than threading up Spirit. I haven't done that in years.

And it's almost as if fate was telling me that I didn't need to bother threading up the Spirit, we had no one show up for the late show?! I wasn't completely surprised, we only had 7 people Sunday night and Monday is often, but not always, quieter than Sunday. We haven't had a no show in about two years.

So we waited 10 minutes in case anyone showed up late then packed up. I got to leave a couple hours early which was kinda nice.